The German Shorthaired Pointer

Every Shorthair you have ever watched lock up on a bird was built on purpose by people who refused to own two dogs. Germany, the 1800s. The hunters there did not have a kennel full of specialists.

They had one dog and they needed it to do everything. Find the bird in the field, hold it, fetch it out of the water, track a wounded deer into the timber after dark. So they built one.

They started with the old heavy pointers that had come up out of Spain. Good nose, no gas. Then they bred in the English pointer for the run and the style and they bred in the hound for the track and they were ruthless about it.

If a dog could not do the whole job, he did not get bred. A prince named Albrecht put it in writing: judge the dog by the work, never by the look. What came out of it is the dog in your truck.

Liver and ticked, built like a quarter horse and wired to go. He runs big and he runs hard and when he hits scent, he stops like he hit a wall. Tail up, nose out, not breathing.

That is three hundred years of breeding, standing still. He came to America in 1925 into Montana and he has never left the field since. The handler's note: a Shorthair without a job will find one, and you will not like it.

Run him and he is the easiest dog you will ever own.

From THE BREED REEL, KENAI's Sunday series on Instagram. Every fact in it is traced to the breed's standard, its parent club, or a named history; nothing came from memory.